A vast collection of art and art books looted by the Nazis from an Estonian Jewish art historian and never returned to his family are likely mostly in Belarus, according to research published today by the World Organization for Jewish Restitution and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Julius Genss focused his collection on Eastern European Jewish art and curated exhibitions and published catalogs, according to the report by Claims Conference historian Ruth Jolanda Weinberger. Its collection included works by Marc Chagall and Lyonel Feininger, as well as lesser-known artists such as Nathan Altman and Zygmunt Dobrzycki. He also collects Japanese netsuke and Chinese ceramics.
In total, he acquired around 5,000 works of art and 20,000 books. Genss turned over part of his collection to the Estonian Art Museum before fleeing with his family to Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1941. The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), the Nazi unit in charge of looting in the territories occupied, looted it from the museum and seized other parts of the collection at various locations, including Genss’ house.
In 1944 the ERR attempted to evacuate the Genss collection in anticipation of the German withdrawal from Estonia. But the Red Army discovered it in February 1945 at Pless station, today Pszczyna in Poland. From there, the Soviet trophy brigade sent him to Minsk.
“For many decades the collection of Julius Genss was virtually forgotten except by the surviving members of his family,” writes Weinberger, whose research was largely based on ERR documents held by Ukraine’s Central State Archives in Kyiv. .
“The history of the looting of cultural property is not well known or not known at all in the many small countries that were occupied during World War II,” says Wesley Fisher, director of research at the Organization World Jewish Restitution and the Claims Conference. “This examination of Estonia’s most important collection to have been looted is an important step towards solving this problem.”
The Genss family attempted to recover the collection, even going so far as to sue the Belarusian Academy of Sciences and the Estonian Academy of Sciences, to no avail.
“The family archive has a letter from a former employee of the Minsk library, in which she asks for help and reports that for the past fortnight the library staff has torn the ex-libris of Julius Genss from his books on the orders of the director, to hide the traces of ownership of the books”, explains Julia Gens, the granddaughter of Julius Genss.
Fisher says that in 2015, long before Russia invaded Ukraine, he traveled to Belarus to discuss looted art and books, including the Genss collection, with library officials. “I don’t think it’s a lost cause,” he says. “That’s just not going to happen right now.”
